Pets need exercise to ensure they are physically and mentally healthy. The amount of exercise needed depends on the species, breed, age, and health of the pet. However, most pets generally need exercise daily. Pets may receive the exercise they need through various activities, including walking, running, and playing. Many of these activities require human involvement and interaction to occur. For example, “fetch” is a popular activity for exercising a dog, which involves a human throwing a ball for the dog to retrieve and/or catch and return to the human. However, a human is often not available or not willing to participate in activities to ensure that a pet receives the exercise and/or entertainment it needs.
Some pet exercise devices launch projectiles for a pet to catch and/or retrieve. However, many of these devices require a human to load the device with projectiles to initiate the exercise activity and again once the device launches all the projectiles that were loaded into the device. Further, many of these devices continually launch projectiles until the device launches all the loaded projectiles or the device is switched off. With such devices, a pet may lose interest in the activity before the device launches all the loaded projectiles, resulting in an unnecessary depletion of the device's power as well as a mess of unretrieved projectiles in the exercise area. Additionally, with such devices, the timing of the launches is not tailored to the individual pet engaging in the activity, which may result in the pet being hit by a projectile or a pet not being able to keep up with the pace of the launches. Further, many of these devices can be tipped over by the pet such that the device does not function properly.
It is with these observations in mind, among others, that various aspects of the present disclosure were conceived and developed.